Yoga and Meniscus Tears

Yoga with J.C.

Welcome to this blog. This is a question that is often asked. How effective is yoga/can yoga help me heal when I have a meniscus tear? Well the short answer to this is; it depends. Now you’re thinking, great! What kind of dumb blog is this, but please, bare with me. The human body is the coolest, most wonderful and complex organism on the planet. Did I say one of the most complicated too?

Think on it. Half the things your body does, you have no real control over, even your breath. Oh, you can extend holding your breath, but sooner or later, your nervous system kicks in and BAM! You’re breathing. Or even how, the body heals itself, the complex movements you make that your body must adapt too and send signals too. I mean, pretty cool and amazing right? But what happens when things don’t go right?

I think before we start to get into the nitty gritty of it all, let’s look closer at the anatomy. Now, this is not an anatomy class, there is no test. It’s about having an idea of what happens and how the knee works. Let’s take a closer look at the picture and explore the anatomy of the knee.

The knee is made up of bone, ligaments, tendons, muscles and soft tissues. (the meniscus for example). All of these things help the knee to do its job. The ligaments, muscle, tendons literally wrap the knee, like a warm blanket around a baby. The soft tissue, the meniscus, is in the middle to keep the bones apart and reduce friction. (see figure 1) all of this is then wrapped in a kind of bubble with liquid in it. (the stuff that builds up and make it look like your knee is 5 times bigger than it is when you injure it.)

The knee, as a joint, takes a beating; when you think about all that you do with your knees or what you make them do, it’s a tough job. This is also why, though you may not have a meniscus tear or other injury, we need to take good care of them. I have a little program to keep your knees healthy in a link after this article.

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However, we are mostly concerned with the menisci, plural in Latin. Though looking at the ligaments, tendons and muscles is also good as they will come into play later in your process to strengthen and better stabilize the knee.

The meniscus is a crescent shaped cartilage that rest on the top of the Tibia. There are 2 of them in each knee. A lateral and a medial. The lateral is on the outside of the knee whilst the medial is inside. Issues mostly, though not always, tend to arise in the medial rather than the lateral. Looking at this picture you get the idea that the knee is a pretty weak joint; it is, but not as much as shoulders. This is also why many people have issues with there knee at one point in their lives.

Usually, these issues happen through repeated movements, some deep yoga positions that require a large amount of knee and hip rotation, and sometimes, it just happens. The issue as an adult comes in the healing process. Blood flow to the meniscus is limited. We definitely have more blood flow to this area as children, however, after the age of 10, that stops and only the outer sections get fed with blood. This limits how much, how well, or if even, you can heal the tear. Patience is key!

Before getting into the asanas and positions, I have a few ground rules you should follow. Oh hell with that, you need to follow.

1. If you have swelling, follow the RICE philosophy. Until the swelling drops considerably.

REST, ICE, COMPRESSION, ELEVATE

2. Rest is important, but once the swelling drops a healing ligament needs a little stress to heal properly, but follow rule #1 and #3

3. Don’t do exercises that cause or makes the pain in the knee worse. Never follow the NO PAIN NO GAIN Philosophy. Stretching and strengthening is one thing; pain is another. If this should happen, simply, with grace and patience, come out of the position then, RICE. Next time you try, don’t go so deep into the exercise.

4. Now this one people always look at me weird. To treat/heal the knee you also need to look at the hips and the ankles. Wait, what? Flexibility and strength in these areas eliminate undo stress on the knees. (and out of injury from sport, most people have injuries in the knees because of alignment issues cause by the hips and ankles.)

5. Flexibility and strength should be trained at the same time. See my video on YouTube on Healthy Knees? How to help knees stay healthy. The idea here is, once the pain and swelling is down we need to move the knee to help it regain its Range of Motion. (ROM) again, here, patience is key. Only go as far as you are able to; Don’t push it. If you do you will only injure the knee further.

So, here are a few exercises/Positions to help you on your journey to healthy knees. These positions are often used in yoga and come from years of practice and research. Also, in 2011 I had a tear in my right knee. It was a lateral meniscus tear, which I have bettered with yoga. Not needing surgery. And unfortunately, in November 2023, the left knee, Medial tear. I have also been using these and now back to sitting cross legged on the ground, though not yet into full ROM. Getting there. So as you can see, I also write this out of experience.

The practice:

You will progress through these and follow the directions as some you will only do later when you feel ready for them.

Let’s start by standing by a wall. Stand with your back to the wall with your feet slightly in front of you. Leaning on the wall bring your toes up in the air and hold a few breaths. Bring your toes down and repeat. 10 times. You can also do this dynamically but first let’s build some isometric strength. Next turn facing the wall, using it for balance, lift your heals off the ground coming onto your toes. Hold for a few breaths, bring the heals down and repeat. 10 times. Here also after some time you can do a set dynamically, moving slowly from toe to heal.

The next exercise we will continue to stand and move away from the wall. Stand nice and straight, hands by your side. For the first part of this sequence, breath in bringing your hands over your head and swan dive down, hanging like a rag doll. (Bend your knees slightly if the hamstrings are very tight to take some of the stress off of the hamstrings and knees.) breath in and put your hands on your shins or above the knees and look forward straightening out your back, breath out, release and hang. Then breath in sweep the hands back up over your head, breathing out bring them back down. Try to do a few of these. How far you go down doesn’t matter, it’s the movement itself. Alright, let’s move to the floor.

To begin, sit on the ground with you legs extended in front of you. Place your hands beside you with your fingers pointing in the direction of your toes. Get you back as straight as possible. We begin with isometric contractions of the quads. (tighten and relax the quads.) You can also pull your toes towards your body, pushing your heals away from you. Hold for 5 to 7 breaths.

After some time you’ll be able to progress to dynamic movement.

Next is the supported bridge pose. Lay on your back and bring your feet close to your body hip width apart. Lift your hips up into the air and hold for several breaths. If you are not able to bend the knee so much then you can modify this pose by keeping you feet a little further away. Coming down, slowly roll down from you shoulders to your knee letting the hip touch the mat last.

Another version of this is to place a block between your legs as you do the pose. This will activate the muscles more. Again this can always be done dynamically too. Once you are able to do these exercises you can move to my video on healthy knees. (link at the end of this article)

To conclude, knees are important for our quality of life and taking care of them should be a priority, sadly we forget about them till it’s too late. Remember, healthy knees allow you to keep doing the things you love to do.

However, when you have injured them, follow these steps here and use it as a guide to help you work through the healing process. The position and exercises I speak about here I use, as I have meniscus tears in both knees. One side is lateral the other medial. So, as I said earlier, these come from experience and research for myself, to bring my knees back into form.

As always, listen to your doctor, as I am a yoga teacher, not a doctor. Talk to them about what you want to do and follow their advice.

I want to thank you for taking the time to read this article.

If you would like more information on yoga classes, meditation, workshops and so on, please feel free to contact me or take a look at me website.

Have a great day!

J.C.

Here is the video: Healthy Knees: How to keep your knees healthy. https://youtu.be/JJJ3NruDetU

My website: https://yogawithjc.offeringtree.com

Copyright 2024 Yoga with J.C.

1Photo courtesy of freepik. www.freepik.com